It is coarse to imagine the Conservatives are conspiring to fix the next election, in plain sight of everyone. If you were bent on suppressing the opposition vote, evading spending limits, and otherwise participating in electoral fraud, presumably you would not take the trouble to advertise this in legislation.

On the other hand, if they are not up to no good, they are doing their best to convince people they are. The secrecy surrounding the Fair Elections Act, the failure to consult in advance of its drafting, the curtailment of debate after, the supreme indifference to legitimate criticism, all under the chilling oversight of the Minister for Democratic Reform, Pierre Poilievre, would be enough to make anyone nervous.

More troubling has been the minister’s failure to explain why the bill’s most controversial measures were deemed necessary — what problems they would solve — and why they should have diverged so sharply from what every expert in the field has recommended, or from existing practice, in Canada and abroad.

Most everyone who looks, for example, would say Canada has a problem with falling turnout: yet the bill, with its ban on vouching and proscription on official efforts to encourage people to vote, would almost certainly depress turnout further. Unable to persuade witnesses to co-operate in the robocalls affair, Elections Canada had asked for more powers to investigate: to compel evidence from witnesses, but also to demand parties turn over records such as receipts for expenses and the phone numbers of those called. Not only was every one of these requests denied, but the agency found itself bound, gagged and cut in two.

No evidence has been advanced why spending and contribution limits needed to be raised, why expenses incurred to raise funds from previous donors should be exempt, or how Elections Canada will be able to ensure those fundraising calls are not used to promote the party or get out the vote. No one asked for these provisions, just as no one recommended that the winning party in each riding be allowed to install its partisans, rather than Elections Canada officials, as poll supervisors: What could possibly be the justification for this?

Whatever the intent of these provisions, their effect is clear. In almost every case, it is to benefit the ruling party: the party that those least likely to vote are least likely to vote for; the party that raises the most funds, with the longest donor list; the party with the most seats, and the most polls to supervise. And, it must be said, the party with the most extensive history of being investigated by Elections Canada. Perhaps the suspicions these arouse are unfounded; if so, the government has made no effort to dispel them.

Quite the contrary. In the face of the most comprehensive panning from expert witnesses of any bill in living memory, the minister has simply retreated further into his talking points. The ban on vouching is needed to prevent fraud — though there is no evidence of fraud taking place. The power to compel evidence is something not even the police have — though it is common in other regulatory agencies. When the author of a report on irregularities in the last election, Harry Neufeld, complained that Poilievre was misrepresenting his findings, he was told he did not understand his own report. When two former Elections Commissioners, in charge of investigations, testified they were quite independent of the chief electoral officer, they were assured they were not.

Unable to answer its critics’ objections, the government has lately shifted into attacking their character. Poilievre told a Senate committee Tuesday that the CEO, Marc Mayrand, is motivated by nothing but a desire for “more power, a bigger budget and less accountability.” The former auditor general, Sheila Fraser, other government members hinted, was on the take: hadn’t she accepted payment to sit as co-chair of Elections Canada’s advisory board? The board’s other members, among them some of the country’s most widely respected political and legal figures, were dismissed by a Tory senator as “celebrities.” The provincial chief electoral officers, political scientists, law professors and other specialists who have denounced the bill were derided as “self-styled” experts. The only people, it would seem, with the integrity or the expertise to comment on the bill are the people who have drafted it to their own advantage.

There’s precedent for this, sadly. It is of a piece with the government’s previous attacks on the former parliamentary budget officer, Kevin Page, and the current auditor general, Michael Ferguson. Like the CEO, their criticisms were dismissed as incompetent at best, partisan at worst — though, like the CEO, both were appointed by this government. This is more than a baseless smear on three conscientious public servants. It is an assault on their independence and authority as officers of Parliament.

But we are into new territory with the attacks on Elections Canada, as recent statements from within the party would seem to confirm. A Conservative MP told The Hill Times the severing of the agency’s investigations branch was likely in retaliation for its handling of the robocalls matter. Stephen Harper’s former communications director, Geoff Norquay, suggested it was “vengeance” for its successful prosecution of the party in the “in-and-out” affair. The Prime Minister himself, asked in Parliament about the bill’s effect on Elections Canada’s independence, mused about the need to ensure the agency is “held accountable for its actions.”

So that is the issue. That’s what the Fair Elections Act is about. With an election less than 18 months away, the government has declared war on the organization in charge of running it. It believes, or wants the public to believe, that Elections Canada is biased against it, and needs to be reined in. And its sole evidence for this extraordinary charge is the agency’s tendency to catch Conservatives in its dragnet. The recklessness — with the facts, with reputations, with the public’s faith in the democratic process — is astounding. The odds of a crisis are growing.

Postmedia News

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